Zombie/Vampires and the End Of the World

[Father Maryland]

Sorry if the title seems strange but this has become something of a issue of thought to me recently.

I am a rather large fan of the more decent new vampire and Zombie novels. Stuff like the Strain, City Of the Dead, Anno Dracula, World War Z, The Passage, Zombies of Madison County and the like. For the most part these books detail the fall of the civilized world in the face of a outbreak of forms of vampirism or zombie-ism. Now I may enjoy reading these works but for the most part given the presented threat the fall of civilization does not feel..... right.

I mean civilization always ends up dieing within a hugely short period of time in nearly all of these. In a few weeks we go from the first attacks to 99.999999 percent of humanity being dead. Governmental forces are nearly always shown as completely incompetent or dissolved nearly instantly. Its never really a fight. Merely a massacre.

It just doesn't seem realistic for everything to be over so quickly.

Not all of these books follow this trope closely. The Passage showed the process of the end lasting years just for North America. In City Of the Dead/The Rising the death of humanity takes more then a month despite literally everything that dies coming back with a hostile intelligent demon inside them. The Zombies Of Madison County and World War Z actually have the humans eventually winning though World War Z is slightly weird regarding the means to which the victory was achieved.

 

[thekingsguard]

I think the main reason is the fact the more you logically try to have zombies take over the earth, the more you relize the only way to do it is to throw logic out. I for one, always find it hard to buy that the moment the dead begin to rise, humankind's collective IQ drops by 70 and we start getting picked off like scabs.

That said, I do enjoy alot of the same books.

 

[Talwar]

I think part of the appeal of such stories is that the protagonist is unbound by any laws but his own once civilization goes to hell. Survival is easier in some respects if anything goes.

Personally, I think civilization is a lot more resilient than the genre gives it credit for.

 

[B_Munro]

Vampires, if we assume vampirism is rapidly transmittable by bite and vampires able to move in daylight as long as they wear enough protective clothing [1], might be able to take over, since they're intelligent, and the "immortality" thing is a hell of an incentive to join the other side: the only really serious difficulty is creating an intial "critical mass" of vampires before people catch on about the blood bank shortages and mass occurences of anemia.

It's a lot harder to believe in zombies taking over, since they're essentially mindless and nobody wants to be one. The only situation I can see where it could happen is if we combine the "mass rising of the dead" trope with the "infectious zombie" trope, thereby creating, as it were, millions of initial vectors of infection. I really can't see either one on it's own doing the job.

I'll note Mira Grant's "Feed" in which civilization does not collapse, but zombies become a permanent problem, since the entire human race is infected with the zombie virus, which is as hard to get rid of as the common cold, and activates when you die or are zombie-bitten: worse, animals over 40 ib. are carriers as well...


Bruce

[1] Dracula in the original novel was able to get out on overcast British days as long as he wore a hat, IIRC

 

[stirlingdraka]

I read Feed this summer and loved it. She has two sequals Deadline and Blackout coming out soon.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

In the recent graphic novel FVZA: Federal Vampire & Zombie Agency (Radical Books), you have an alternate history, wherein vampirism and zombies are infected by disease, outbreaks of either are controlled by paramilitary forces, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government...

 

[Fenrir_Angerboda]

Sorry if the title seems strange but this has become something of a issue of thought to me recently.

I am a rather large fan of the more decent new vampire and Zombie novels. Stuff like the Strain, City Of the Dead, Anno Dracula, World War Z, The Passage, Zombies of Madison County and the like. For the most part these books detail the fall of the civilized world in the face of a outbreak of forms of vampirism or zombie-ism. Now I may enjoy reading these works but for the most part given the presented threat the fall of civilization does not feel..... right.

I mean civilization always ends up dieing within a hugely short period of time in nearly all of these. In a few weeks we go from the first attacks to 99.999999 percent of humanity being dead. Governmental forces are nearly always shown as completely incompetent or dissolved nearly instantly. Its never really a fight. Merely a massacre.

It just doesn't seem realistic for everything to be over so quickly.

Not all of these books follow this trope closely. The Passage showed the process of the end lasting years just for North America. In City Of the Dead/The Rising the death of humanity takes more then a month despite literally everything that dies coming back with a hostile intelligent demon inside them. The Zombies Of Madison County and World War Z actually have the humans eventually winning though World War Z is slightly weird regarding the means to which the victory was achieved.

having read the Three main Books of that series, I need to ask, when did this Zombie apocalypse happen?

the Only time they Mentioned Zombies was in Dracula Cha-cha-cha/Judgement of Tears, and that was only as an offshoot of Vampirism, that didn't seem to be anywhere near causing the apocalypse.

 

[Father Maryland]

having read the Three main Books of that series, I need to ask, when did this Zombie apocalypse happen?

the Only time they Mentioned Zombies was in Dracula Cha-cha-cha/Judgement of Tears, and that was only as an offshoot of Vampirism, that didn't seem to be anywhere near causing the apocalypse.

Well vampires did essentially take control of the world in Anno Dracula. They might not have been zombies but they were undead and a good percentage of the world was under there rule.